Enugu's House of Drugs & Controversies

The recent incrimination of six members of Enugu State House of Assembly over drug peddling generates unease in the state, although the House is never new to controversies.

The leadership of Enugu State House of Assembly, on July 30, battled feverishly to exonerate its members linked to importation of 450.4 kilos. The cocaine amounted to about N4billion! (Picture shows Barrister Eugene Odoh, Speaker of Enugu State House of Assembly Nigeria)

The Barrister Eugene Odoh-led House got enmeshed in the drug scandal when some of its members recently accompanied the state Governor, Barrister Sullivan Chime, to an overseas trip. The hard drug was reportedly confiscated at the Lagos Tin Can Island from a syndicate by operatives of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA).

Reports have it that it was, indeed, the Nigerian agent handling the clearing of the container in which the cocaine was discovered that blew the lid off the drug ring of Enugu state Honorable members. The clearing agent’s identity, ostensibly, remain undisclosed for now so as not to endanger investigations into the matter.

But further inquiries by Insider Weekly magazine into the messy development have thrown up the identities, albeit in descriptive terms, of the six ‘honorable’ drug pushers in the Assembly.

The six cocaine peddlers, from our investigations, include a two-term-serving female legislator (a widow) from Enugu West zone; one of the speakers emeritus of the House who is currently serving his third term, as well as a first term serving law maker, who was, at the inception of the House in this political dispensation, sacked as Deputy Speaker of the House under controversial circumstances.

The others include a legislator from Enugu East zone, famous for his electronic business; another female law maker (a Princess from Nsukka whose husband lives abroad) serving her second term in the house. The last but not the least of the incriminated legislators is a fat fair-skinned legislator, unarguably, the longest serving law maker in Enugu State House of Assembly. For those who know him, this particular legislator is noted for sleeping each time the house is on session.
Meanwhile, reactions have been trailing the ‘legislative’ drug burst.

To this effect, an on-line news website, www.Icheoku.com, demands ‘a full and complete investigation’ if the alleged involvement of the six Enugu law makers in drug-trafficking and importation of 450 kilos of cocaine into Nigeria is true.
Icheoku, similarly, demands ‘disclosure of the identities of the ‘dishonorable law makers, including their communities and political party affiliations’. The website wants that the full weight of the law to be brought upon the ‘drug baron legislators’.

‘It is regrettable the grave length some of these unscrupulous and supposed ‘honorable’ men and women will go just to remain in power. That these politicians need money to prosecute elections, does not grant them impunity to do just anything to get that money; and at all cost and any means whatsoever; including breaking the law on Nigeria's drug trafficking’, Icheoku laments, describing the action of the legislators as a bad example to generations yet unborn.

Stated Icheoku: ‘It is a shame! The EFCC and the Nigerian authorities must, therefore, make an example out of these six (dis)honorable individuals by punishing them sufficiently. Also their political party/ies should suspend and disqualify them from running for any future elective offices on their party platforms for showing a bad example of how not to be legislators. We note with regrets that this is the second time Enugu State lawmakers are making ignoble headlines and this particular illicit drug pushing by six of their lawmakers is not only criminal but unbecoming of any law makers anywhere, who by their present action, have now become law breakers instead’.

Some other commentators who spoke to the magazine have urged the NDLEA to quickly release the full identities of the 'six legislative drug traffickers' for suspension from the House immediately and subsequent prosecution for the heinous crime.
As it were, the only feeble reaction to be put up by Speaker Odoh whose House is, for the umpteenth time, attracting negative attention from the national and international communies over illegitimate activities, was to the effect that Enugu state’s NDLEA commandant, Reuben Apeh, had briefed the House, but was not forthcoming with the identities of the affected members of his House.

Odoh regretted that members of the House, since the publication, have been thrown into confusion, justifiably apprehensive that the development might lead to the house being perceived by Nigerians as harboring criminals in their midst.
Although efforts of Odoh’s leadership aimed at unmasking the legislator-turned drug barons yielded no result, he, nonetheless, quips: ‘We shall continue in our investigations and if at the end of it all it is found to be a hoax, we will take every step to get redress and if otherwise, the House will be the first to expose the culprits’.

On his own part, Hon. Marcel Njeze, Chairman of the House committee on communication said: ‘The image of the House is very important… We are as well not trying to protect any member that is involved in criminal acts. We will, however, go to the police to make available to us the names of those members alleged to be implicated’. Njeze dispelled the claim that three of the six said to be involved in the drug matter have been contacted and no arrest has far been made.

When contacted, Apeh, the NDLEA commandant in the state, explained that the House members merely invited him to furnish them with the details of the matter, but he told them that he was yet to get full briefing on the case from his Abuja headquartres. Apeh clarified that he was not aware of any clean bill of health given to the House on the matter, but assured that information would always be made public as soon as available.

As earlier stated, this is not the first time Enugu State House is slipping into controversies of this magnitude, in fact, to the utmost embarrassment of both the federal government and the government of Barrister Sullivan Chime.

The N200m London trip of controversy is still fresh in the minds of keen watchers of political events in Enugu state. The legislators traveled to London for a seminar on lawmaking, understandably, to sharpen their legislative abilities and, further, enhance their individual skills for the benefit of the state.

But the cost of the trip, put at about N200m, generated more controversies that it was meant to within and outside the state. Many, indeed, considered it a sheer waste of public fund!

For that two weeks in the London trip, there were said to be a 31-member delegation, including the 24 members of the assembly, the Clerk of the House, two assistants and other aides to the governor, who would have academic sessions with the British parliamentarians and experts on, in addition to a guided tour of the city.

The legislators, it was learnt, initially planned to visit the United States, but had to settle for the UK due to their inability to obtain visa to the US. But the sore and obfuscating point therein was that each member of the delegation reportedly got $5,200 (about N.7 million) as estacode at $400 daily for 13 days, besides air ticket, hotel accommodation and feeding allowances and transportation within London city. The charges of the resource persons and the consultants could not be ascertained, but it was expected to run into thousands of pounds.

In fact, Nigerian citizens of good conscience felt the money being so extra-expended could have been deployed for infrastructure development, condemned the trip and described it as sheer profligacy and argued that if such amount was spent on the provision of potable water, it would greatly ease the pains of residence who suffer to get the essential commodity.

Some Nigerians in the Diaspora took the issue seriously and made blistering comments against the lawmakers and the state government. They lampooned the government, alleging that the trip was a ploy by the state government to buy the loyalty of the legislators. Most Nigerians in the Diaspora described the trip as 'wasteful gallivanting'.

A news commentary Icheoku posted on its website on Saturday October 25, 2008, entitled: ‘Enugu State: This Is Crazy!’ said: "this aren’t right and smacks of a government which does not set its priorities right. What seminar is worth the peoples' N200m (about $1.2million dollars) in a state where the average Joe lives on less than $2 a day gross income?"

The commentary went further: "It is as pitiful as it is regrettable that all these charlatans in governments throughout Nigeria and now particularly in Enugu State are doing, is to exploit every opportunity to siphon the peoples' money and sometimes use it for frivolous ends. Irrespective of the subterfuge being given for this wasteful jamboree, Icheoku says it is uncalled for as it is an exercise in wasteful spending! And for a state like Enugu State where some people have no jobs, no drinking water, no electricity, no good roads, no medical care, no food and so on, it is atrocious to waste such enormous amount of resources for mere junketing. Admitted that N200m ordinarily may not sound too much for a state, but a more prudent government could have spent this money rather responsibly to create new jobs or fix one of the severally broken things within the infrastructure of the state".

The scathing criticism on the issue compelled the government to issue a statement denouncing the report as 'a smear campaign against the government.' In the statement, the government, through Professor Jude Akubuilo, Special Adviser on Special Projects and Diaspora Matters, denied that the lawmakers had applied for US visa, and insisted that they were not traveling to London, stressing that the government was transparent and open in its business and was more concerned with using its resources to develop the state.

Said Akubuilo: ‘As for the N200m being quoted by the media as the cost of the trip, the amount to be spent is not up to that. The figure is from the opposition who wants to embarrass the government’.

Many citizens of the state, nonetheless, queried the rationale behind the trip, wondering why the government which was laboring to be seen as an apostle of transparency and good governance would dole out a huge amount for what they called mere 'legislative sight-seeing'.
"I can't really see what Enugu lawmakers are going to London to learn; the excursion to London is just a waste of scarce resources’, an indigene, Chukwudi Johnson averred.
To Barrister Ray Nnaji then, the trip would deal a deadly blow on the economy of the state. Suspecting the motive behind the trip for the legislators at that point in time, Nnaji called for caution in the legislators’ trip.

For the 24 member Enugu State House of Assembly, controversy is their second names, and they crave for it with the eagerness of a newly married couple. To remove controversy from Enugu Assembly may amount to removing a shark from a sea. For the legislators, most of whom cannot, indeed, accurately define ‘legislation’, controversy walks on all fours, and they are happy for it.

For now, the whole world awaits the full identities of Enugu State House of Assembly ‘honorable’ drug barons, for there will be no hiding place for them. Or will there be any?

Culled from: Insider Weekly Magazine, No 31, August 16, 2010